


War and Love

by AlleyMoslof



Series: Dragon in the Mountain AU [3]
Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, M/M, Memories, Past gin/ran, Tosh is loved ❤️, Trying to fix the world, Uh..., ichigo being best boyfriend, nemu is there for like five second, nobles are butts, tosh is tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29348154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlleyMoslof/pseuds/AlleyMoslof
Summary: Continuation of Dragon in the Mountain. Begins with Ichigo checking on the Cracks in the Realms and ends answering questions that had been left unanswered in DitM.
Relationships: Hitsugaya Toushirou/Kurosaki Ichigo
Series: Dragon in the Mountain AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2133873
Kudos: 7





	War and Love

**Author's Note:**

> I’m doing a bunch of one shots/ multiple chaptered stories for the rest of this since I don’t really have an end goal like I did in Dragon in the Mountain. 
> 
> These are gonna consist of the War, Toshiro getting used to being king and all the moments in between

“How are we looking?” The room was a mess, papers and people were everywhere, scrambling, trying to get their job done as soon as possible without getting in other’s way.

“The crack between Hueco Mundo and the Living Realm seems to be holding. Its closure is 76.987% complete, but seems to have slowed down from a rate of 8.673% per hour to a rate of 1.576% per hour due to the imbalance still present in the two realms. The rift between Hueco Mundo and Soul Society is closing at 2.452% per hour and is expected to increase to 5.709% by the end of the day. Right now it is at 38.987% closure, but is expected to hit 50% before nightfall.”

_ Precise as always, although I could do with just the bare percentages.  _ Ichigo’s hand flew across the paper as he wrote everything Nemu said.

“I have it all in this report if that would make things easier, Captain Kurosaki.” She held out a folder containing about 75 already typed out and pristine pages, full of calculations and graphs on the eight largest cracks between the realms.

A sigh of relief escaped his mouth at the sight. Give him basic paperwork or a battle and he’s on it but logistics and strategy was best left to Toshiro. It was because of the white haired teen that Ichigo was even in Division Twelve. 

As Ichigo entered the Soul King’s office, he was reminded why he went on the semi-risky errand instead of his boyfriend. If he thought the Research Division was bad, it was nothing compared to Toshiro’s office. There were papers on the desk, pinned to the walls, scattered on the floor. There were maps and diagrams taped to the ceiling above their allocated space. It was a messy organization that was only understood by the person who had created it. Ichigo was worried about ruining the organized chaos of paper as he gently stepped towards the desk where a white head laid resting in between the sheets of reports and forms.

The fact that the office was messy in the first place was worrying. Toshiro was organized almost to the point of it being a compulsion, believing that if he could control the chaos in his office then he was one step closer to controlling the chaos in the realms. However, the office had looked like this for weeks as Toshiro worked tirelessly to fix the mess that had been left in his hands.

_ King for only four months and he’s already sound asleep on a desk instead of a bed.  _ Ichigo grimaced and sighed. He gently placed the report in a stack of  _ Need to Do ASAP _ . The stack was towering, but not as much as the others around the room. Turned out, learning to be king amongst a multidimensional crisis meant lots of paperwork and a rushed education.

What time wasn’t taken up by the overflowing amount of sheer administration work was dedicated to learning the traditions and protocol that surrounded the new role Toshiro found himself in. Wardrobe fittings and meetings took up the rest of the minuscule time remaining. Toshiro was lucky if he could see his own daughter for more than five minutes beyond meal times. (If he didn’t skip them or take them in his office.)

Unfortunately, Ichigo, despite being in a relationship with Toshiro, was not qualified nor given the clearance needed to be of much help. It had been problematic enough for them to convince the nobility that Toshiro, a child from the Rukon Districts, was now King of Soul Society and was considered above them. Toshiro were extremely thankful for the Shiba clan, the Shihouin clan, and Byakuya for supporting their claim, for even with all the documents and proof that they had, the stuck up assholes still wouldn’t accept Toshiro as their ruler. 

Knowing that he was marrying someone of noble blood was what finally convinced them. 

Ichigo looked at the ring on his finger in sadness. He was happy to be engaged to Toshiro, don’t get him wrong. He just hated that everything about it was forced. Their engagement felt more like a treaty than a relationship. There were even signatures on paper and consequences, mainly for Toshiro, if they broke the engagement.

Honestly, that’s why Toshiro was still his boyfriend in his head. At least until they could have an actual proposal, with rings that they picked out and terms that they decided on. 

_ But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Not with this war. Toshiro was busy enough. _ Ichigo picked up the sleeping king in his arms. His exhaustion showed as he didn’t even wake at the movement, just hung there limply. His head rolled onto Ichigo’s shoulder, his slow breaths gracing across his neck. 

As Ichigo walked, slowly and gently, the rocking motion seemed to bring some awareness as the teal eyes showed for a split second and arms wrapped around his neck, making walking easier.

Protocol made it where they couldn’t share a room until they were married, but that’s the one rule Ichigo refused to follow. Not with the nightmares that still plagued the white haired man in his arms. Now, it wasn’t just dreams of Toshiro’s past and trials that he had to sleep through but also the dreams that the Heavens graced him with. His acceptance of his bloodline had opened up all the gifts and curses that came with it.

Visions were just one of them. Like his great grandmother, Toshiro saw the past, the present and the future almost every other night. Wonderful things, painful things, and everything in between. Toshiro saw their daughter grown up and with a child of her own, a bubbly, little girl with flowing white hair and bright blue eyes. He saw his great grandmother’s death at the hands of her brother. He saw Ichigo when he was eight playing with his sisters at the park down the street from their house. 

_ Shit, I need to contact Karin and get a report from her. _ Ichigo yawned and rubbed his face after tucking Toshiro into bed. As he sent his sister a message on the soul pager, he glanced at the sleeping royal, whose face was still calm and deep in sleep,  _ It doesn’t look like he’s going to have either tonight. That’s a relief. _

_ *PING!* _

_ -u do realize its 4 am????? Wft??? Txt me @ a actual hr-  _

The window reflected his shocked face. Sure enough, the stars were out and there was no sun in sight. No wonder he was so tired. 

He thought back to the papers in his own office, piling up nowhere near as high as Toshiro’s but it was still enough. It looks like it’s going to be a long night for him. 

Or maybe he can just do it all in the morning. None of the papers were of high importance, just general reports on his division as he was still the active captain until his replacement was trained. 

His sister Karin had been a shoo-in for the Division Ten Captaincy as one of the few people Toshiro would trust with his men, his division, his life’s work. She had been his third seat before the trials began and had been the temporary captain during the seven months Toshiro was without his powers. Rangiku remained as the Lieutenant but planned on joining her son and granddaughter in the Soul Palace permanently when everything calmed down. As it was right now, she was the one who watched Fuyuki while Toshiro and Ichigo worked.

Many tears had been shed by the mother-son duo, more so from Rangiku, when Ichigo revealed to them what Hyorinmaru had told him. Toshiro, since then, had had visions of when he had been a baby, visions that he shared with his mother through a memory device of the Twelfth’s making. Visions of his first word (“mama!” the baby reached out insistently towards the strawberry blonde, teal eyes sharp as if daring his mother not to pick him up.), his first steps (stumbling after his mom as she left to get some food from the kitchen). 

He had been a big mama’s boy it seemed, absolutely adoring of her and constantly wanting to be held by her. He had toddled after her like a little duckling as soon as he learned how to walk and babbled away at her as she folded laundry or picked up his toys.

The visions of his father were harder to watch and Toshiro always woke up shouting, angry and with tears threatening to spill. 

His father had loved them and that was hard for him to accept.

Toshiro could tell he loved them by the way he was patient with the toddler, how he gently wiped his cheek when he got food all over himself. He could tell by the way he looked at his mother, pale blue eyes open and looking at her like he was staring at an angel. It was hard for Toshiro to wrap his mind around the Ichimaru that he knew and the Gin in his visions. He had still been a snake, full of tricks and teasing, but they were softer, meant to teach rather than harm. 

As Toshiro looked back on his own memories, it seemed as if Ichimaru had always been that way with him. He had just been too angry, too proud to see the lessons hidden in the mockery and the trickery.

It brought clarity to moments of confusion in Toshiro’s past, like their battle before Ichimaru turned traitor, during the Ryoka Invasion that Ichigo caused. Toshiro had known Ichimaru could attack quicker than he had been. Toshiro shouldn’t have been able to dodge those attacks, not at the level he had been at. 

But Ichimaru had slowed them down. He had made sure that the attacks aimed at Toshiro were all moves his son could dodge or block. Even when he used his Shikai, Toshiro had been far enough away to be able to dodge it. In the end, neither had a single injury despite Toshiro thinking it was a battle to the death. 

Gin had been looking out for him. In a twisted and warped way that was fitting for the man Toshiro remembered, he had been looking out for his family, for his son. Even if they didn’t know it.

When Toshiro brought his grandfather’s body from Division Twelve to his crying granny, he asked her about him. About his father and his grandfather, about what they were like and how she remembered them. Her stories and the conversations with Matsumoto almost felt like a balm on his soul.

He had been loved.

He had been loved by both his parents. He wasn’t a monster or a mistake in their eyes. He wasn’t hated. He hadn’t been left for dead in a frozen wasteland. He hadn’t been abandoned.

Instead, he was the child that they risked their lives multiple times to protect. The child that they had shielded from harm, hid until they were no longer able to. The child that they broke laws and tried to dethrone wanna-be gods to protect. The child that his father sent pages and pages of letters to his grandmother about. The child that his mother carried around as if glued to her side, constantly kissing his forehead or his chubby baby cheeks, making him giggle. The child that she guided and fought to protect despite not knowing he was her own. The child she stood behind and supported for  _ decades _ .

He had been  _ loved. _

Finally, the questions that he had asked himself his entire life, the questions he never thought he’d be able to voice to the right people, had been answered.

He had been  _ loved. _

_ He was loved. _


End file.
